Maxwell's Return (8 page)

‘It was last term,’ he began and Maxwell settled his features into an expression of interest. He would get nowhere by bursting out with the proper version of events, the Matthews Version; Diamond could spin for England but Maxwell would have to play a waiting game. On one balmy evening, sitting out in what he had learned to call the yard, he, Jacquie and Nolan had watched a gecko stalking a locust, each movement tiny, slow and controlled so as not to lose its prey. He decided to take a leaf out of its book and he all but disappeared into the chair. Gordon (as they had
inevitably named the creature) would have been proud.

‘It was last term. Bernard hadn’t spoken to me, but he had had concerns about a girl he was tutoring. I haven’t had all of the facts, but it seems the long and the short of it is that Bernard may have been the last person to see her alive.’

Maxwell may have been in gecko-mode, but he had to speak. ‘The next to last person, surely,’ he said.

‘What?’ Diamond blinked. ‘What?’

‘Her murderer would be the last person, surely?’ he said, with a small smile.

‘Yes, yes.’ Diamond was cross with himself. He shouldn’t have fallen into that trap – it looked bad. ‘Yes, as you say. There were… certain factors that made the police come and take Bernard in for questioning.’ He took off his glasses and peered short-sightedly across his desk at Maxwell. ‘Only questioning, mind you. There was no arrest.’

Maxwell inclined his head, reptile-style.

‘I did ask Bernard later how things had gone and he told me that he had declined to give an alibi. That’s the actual word he used, Max.
Declined
. So, of course, I had no option but to ask him to accept suspension from his post. I told him he could have a union representative with him, or a friend from the staff, but he said no, there was no point.’ Diamond managed a wintry smile. ‘In fact, he said with you not around, there was no one he would choose.’

‘Me?’ Maxwell was staggered. He had exchanged few words with Bernard Ryan that could not be classed as frankly hostile, as far as his innate public-schoolboy manners would allow. If he was the nearest thing to a friend that Ryan could summon up, it was a sorry state of affairs to be sure.

‘I don’t think as a friend, so much, as someone who knew what the score was. You have been… in trouble,’ the headteacher had the grace to look a little shamefaced, ‘yourself and of course you do have your links with the police.’

‘Well, my wife is a detective inspector,’ Maxwell conceded.

Diamond looked at the man. He was no less exasperating now than when he had seen him last. He would never help you out of a hole if he could throw more earth in instead. He let it go. ‘Quite so. Anyway, Bernard took his suspension and he is still off, as you already know. I suppose you also know he has been taken in by the police a second time.’

Maxwell could not use a five and a half thousand mile distance as an excuse this time and decided to give the sucker an even break. ‘Yes, I did hear something about that.’

‘Do you know why?’

This wasn’t right. He was in here to ask Diamond the questions, not the other way around. He toyed briefly with swivelling the headmaster’s lamp into his eyes and rapping out something from
The Untouchables
, but he knew that Legs Diamond had no sense of humour at all. ‘I got a tiny
gist, but I can’t really…’

‘I do understand, Max. I shouldn’t have asked.’

Diamond the humble was not something you saw very often and Maxwell felt the earth tremble slightly beneath his feet. ‘If it’s any comfort,’ he said, ‘Jacquie is sure there is nothing in it. It was simply the police exploring every avenue.’

Diamond perked up a little, as far as he ever perked. He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I thought it was probably something like that. So he’ll be back soon, you think?’

Maxwell had heard that tone before. When Nolan’s goldfish had died, he had asked when it would wake up in exactly the same way.

‘It’s not for me to say,’ Maxwell said, ‘but in his shoes I think I would wait a while longer until he was sure that he wouldn’t be pulled in again. It wouldn’t look too good, would it, if the police…’

Diamond shied like a startled filly. ‘Oh, no, no, you’re right. I’ll tell him to not even think of coming back until… well, until…’ He had picked up the phone and stabbed a fast dial code. He waited, receiver to ear, smiling vaguely at Maxwell. The sound of the phone ringing at the other end oozed through his head and into the room. After a moment or so he put the receiver down. ‘Not in,’ he said. ‘I wonder where he might be.’

Maxwell pressed his lips together in what in certain circumstances might pass for a smile. He knew where Bernard Ryan was and he wouldn’t be in a position to answer the phone. He decided to try to find
out at least a little more than he knew already. ‘Any idea why Bernard wouldn’t give an alibi?’ he asked. ‘It would have prevented all of this, right from the start.’

Diamond spread his arms out wide. ‘I have no idea. I think I always assumed that he didn’t have one. That he was out for a walk, at the cinema, something like that; somewhere anonymous.’

‘But that isn’t declining to give an alibi, is it?’ Maxwell persisted. ‘That’s just having a rubbish alibi. No, Bernard must have something to hide. But what?’ He waited expectantly.

Diamond leaned forward and briefly looked almost human. ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about this, Max, because a day hasn’t gone by since the police took him away that I haven’t thought about it. You have no idea how awful it was. They didn’t bother to be even slightly subtle. They used handcuffs! On Bernard!’

‘I’m sorry Jacquie and I weren’t here,’ Maxwell said, and meant it. ‘I’m sure she could have… well, she just doesn’t do handcuffs unless there is no option.’

‘Of course, the students loved it. It was all I could do to make them put their mobile phones away. Bernard isn’t popular, as you may know.’ Diamond made the last statement sound like news and Maxwell felt for the man; that he could be so unaware of other people was almost a talent. ‘Bernard behaved with a lot of dignity but he was very short with me when we spoke on the phone a few days later. I got the impression he had
someone with him, and of course…’ he looked left and right and then dropped his voice, ‘I couldn’t help
thinking
if you know what I mean?’

‘Indeed, headmaster,’ Maxwell said, getting up abruptly. For a moment there, he had felt sorry for the man. But he was clearly an arse. ‘I must go. I’m on Nolan duty until we start term. His mother is back at work, as you know, so I must be away. Mrs Troubridge isn’t getting any younger and Nole’s a bit young yet to be calling ambulances. I’ll see you at the start of term.’ And he turned on his heel and was gone. He sighed. He had hoped to sort things out here, but the horse’s mouth it would have to be. And, after a brief word with morning Thingie, who asked if he’d met Brad Pitt, he and White Surrey were purring through the highways and byeways of Leighford, Columbine-bound.

Maxwell rapped on Mrs Troubridge’s door with his usual élan and waited patiently for her to answer. He and Jacquie had realised long ago that they and Mrs Troubridge saw a completely different thing when they looked at Nolan. They saw a feisty child, slightly on the stocky side, with hair that would lie down sometimes for as many as three minutes together, with the heart of a lion, with a mouth on him that would get him into serious trouble one day and the brain of a rather sophisticated thirty year old. She saw a delicate creature, put on earth to be wrapped in velvet with a
protective layer of bubble wrap for safety, with a fragile ego that could be crushed like an eggshell by the smallest slight, a creature of air and cobwebs who she, Mrs Troubridge, must guard to her last breath. Therefore, when he was on the Troubridge side of the door, he was not allowed to hurtle down the stairs to open it, for fear of broken bones on the way down and potential shock forward slash abduction when he got there. Maxwell heard the tell-tale signs of Mrs Troubridge’s careful steps underscored by Nolan’s cry of ‘We’re on our way, Dads!’

‘It might not be your father, dear,’ he heard his neighbour say, her voice now clearly just the other side of the door. ‘Let me look through the letterbox to see before we open the door.’

Maxwell always felt faintly embarrassed as Mrs Troubridge’s critical gaze examined his general crotch area and he never knew what to do with his hands. But whatever it was she used as criteria clearly passed muster this time and she opened the door, sliding bolts and chains until it was free.

‘Mr Maxwell!’ she said, amazed that he should be there of all places, at the previously appointed time. She looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s your father, Nolan.’

‘Yes,’ Nolan said, wriggling to the front of the unlikely duo. ‘Dads, we’re in the middle of a film. Can I come round when it’s finished?’

‘Well…?’ Maxwell raised an interrogative eyebrow at Mrs Troubridge, aka Mary Poppins.

‘I’d be delighted,’ she said. ‘Besides, That Woman is next door cleaning, so it wouldn’t be suitable for Nolan.’ She clutched him to her side, to protect him from Mrs B, in absentia though she was.

‘Mrs B?’ Maxwell asked. ‘I wasn’t sure she would be coming any more. I understand that Hector…’

‘Mr Gold is
most
fastidious,’ Mrs Troubridge said smugly. ‘He couldn’t contemplate That Woman’s slapdash ways.’

‘But I thought you and Mrs B were friends these days,’ Maxwell remarked.

‘Not
friends
, Mr Maxwell,’ Mrs Troubridge hissed. ‘I don’t think you could call us
friends
.’

Maxwell smiled and looked down at Nolan, who was starting to squirm a little in Mrs Troubridge’s iron grip. For a little old lady, she had a lot of core strength. ‘Well, in that case, Mrs Troubridge, if Nolan could stay a while, that would be wonderful. I do have an errand to run, possibly, so…’

‘Any time,’ Mrs Troubridge twittered. ‘His bed is made up, as always, so don’t worry. He can always go to bed here if you and Jacquie are going to be late.’

‘And Metternich?’ Maxwell loved to wind his neighbour up on the subject of the cat and just let her go till the clockwork wore down.

‘You know my views,’ Mrs Troubridge said, bridling. She looked like a very tiny, very wizened Les Dawson. ‘But I have some sachets to
hand, of course. If he calls.’

Metternich could smell a sachet of cat food, opened or unopened, at an as yet undetermined distance and so Maxwell knew he would be fine. All he need do now was to track down Bernard Ryan and the next stage could commence. He tipped his hat to Mrs Troubridge, kissed Nolan on the top of the head and went down one path, up another and opened his own front door, to the distant whine of the hoover.

It was clear from the first second that Mrs B, ‘that woman’, who cleaned up at the school and chez Maxwell, had not changed in the seven months since Maxwell had seen her last. He did not mean that in the underwear sense, of course, if only because underwear and Mrs B were such non-sequiturs it didn’t bear thinking about. No, it was as if she had been poised there, Dyson in hand at the end of the hallway, just waiting for this golden moment.

‘Hello, Mr M,’ she roared over the machine, as if she had forgotten how to switch it off. ‘Ain’t you brown? Bet the old lungs are full of smog, though, eh? Did you meet Brad Pitt at all? Ooh, and what about that Mr Ryan, up at the school? There’s more than that to meet the eye. But it’s really nice to have you back.’

Maxwell had missed the staccato rattle of Mrs B’s conversations; she was a one-woman Gatling gun. But he could match her, bullet point for bullet. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. Yes, smog is a Californian problem, but, as you see, I have survived. Sadly, Bradley was out when we called. What
about Mr Ryan indeed? Yes, there always is. And it’s nice to
be
back, Mrs B and to gaze upon your radiant features.’

‘Whatever,’ Mrs B said, and gave the skirting board an extra hard whack, to hide her confusion.

The Leighford Nick desk sergeant had become quite complacent while the Maxwell family had been in California. He had got quite used to answering the phone without his adrenalin flooding his system, even though he knew that news of fresh disasters might even so be on the other end. At least it wouldn’t be Maxwell. But now, here he was again and his visit to the good old U S of A hadn’t changed him a bit. With no attempt at conversation, the desk man merely pushed the button for Jacquie’s extension and put the phone down. He only forebore to wipe his hand down the side of his trousers because he was in the middle of dealing with one of Leighford’s madder old biddies, here to report a missing cat; she had forgotten, for the eighth time that week, that Tiddles had gone to that great litterbox in the sky when that nice Mr Brown had been at Number Ten.

‘DI Carpenter-Maxwell.’

‘I love the way that rolls out,’ Maxwell was doing his very best Wile. E. Coyote.

‘Hello, Max,’ she said, with a hint of suspicion and a soupcon of having someone in the room with her. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Results surprisingly good, Nolan and Mrs Troubridge like two little birds in their nest and Mrs B is wielding a handy hoover. All well with you?’ He hoped the question was loaded with innuendo.

She got the subliminal message and dropped her voice a tone. ‘All is well at this end,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s back at home where they may not be for long, but apart from that, it’s all hunky dory.’

‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed. ‘Er… I may be out when you get back. Nole is with Mrs T and your dinner is in the lodger. ’Bye.’ And he hung up quickly. If she asked no questions, she would hear no lies and that was the best way all round.

‘Max!’ she hissed down the phone but knew she was too late. He was too far away for her to reach the house before he was long gone, but she had a way of checking his destination. She glanced round at Jason Briggs, who was trying not to look as if he were eavesdropping at the far side of the room. ‘Excuse me, Jason, I must just make a call. Child care. Such a problem.’ She flashed him a sweet smile and went out onto the landing and dialled a familiar number.

‘Leighford High School.’ Thingie One hated results day. Lots of irate parents who couldn’t believe their little geese had failed everything, wanting to speak to Diamond just drove her crazy, but the worst was over
now.